Colorful History of AFL Is Focus of Book, DVD

Hidden behind a facade of artificially enforced parity and the very real consequence of widespread mediocrity, a power shift has been detected within the NFL.

In 2003, at age 84, the NFL has become an AFL kind of league.

The two winningest teams in the NFL, the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs, are charter members of the old American Football League.

This season’s most valuable NFL player is arguably Steve McNair, quarterback for the Tennessee Titans, who broke ground with the other AFL originals in 1960 as the Houston Oilers.

Longest winning streak in the NFL? The Patriots’ current 10-0 run.

Biggest surprise story this season? The Cincinnati Bengals, who made their debut as an AFL expansion team in 1968.

Even the obligatory NFL controversy of the week -- Joe (On The) Horn’s end-zone cell phone call -- was spawned by post-touchdown antics pioneered decades ago by AFC entertainers Elmo Wright and Billy “White Shoes” Johnson.

With one exception, the NFL has a proud history of trampling every upstart league that ever rented blocking sleds. The league ground up the All-American Football Conference in the 1940s, the World Football League in the 1970s and the United States Football League in the 1980s, then watched with amusement as the XFL head-butted itself into extinction within a matter of weeks.

The one exception was the AFL, which caused the NFL such grief in its first six seasons that the older league agreed to a merger in 1966, eventually absorbing the AFL before the 1970 season.

Two recent releases focus on the AFL’s fascinating history. “Going Long” is an oral chronicle of the league’s “wild 10-year saga,” compiled by Dallas Morning News Sports Editor Jeff Miller. “Inside The Vault: 1960-1970” is an NFL Films DVD that takes a look at how “the American Football League grew into a force all its own ... [evolving] from humble beginnings to the juggernaut that forced a merger with the mighty NFL.”

Playing off the AFL’s self-styled image, both book and DVD feature the term “renegade” in their subtitles. That was the league approach, from the start, when a group of disgruntled wannabe NFL owners, blocked in their bid to buy expansion teams, decided in 1959 to start their league.

Lamar Hunt, an AFL founder, told Miller, “There were merger conversations on and off going back before the AFL ever actually played a game, all the way back to the fall of 1959. People would get together and say, ‘Well, there shouldn’t be a second league. Take an expansion team in the NFL.’ ”

The NFL tried to buy off Hunt, who wanted a franchise in Dallas. But Hunt remained with the AFL group, eventually founding the Dallas Texans, who would move to Kansas City and become the Chiefs in 1963. Max Winter was not as resolute. When the NFL waved a Minneapolis expansion franchise in front of him, Winter jumped at it, abandoning his AFL plans and creating a vacancy that would be filled by the Oakland Raiders.

Or the Oakland Senors, the team’s actual chosen name for a few minutes.

Miller writes: “One of the club’s many owners was in the habit of addressing acquaintances as ‘senor’ and rigged a name-the-team contest to result in the club’s being called the Oakland Senors ... The club’s name was announced at a cocktail party, with an informal mascot making a grand entrance clad in sombrero and serape.

“Soon after, someone decided such a moniker was not in the best interest of the city, and the nickname Raiders was eventually adopted along with the helmeted pirate and crossed swords logo.”

So, even before they played a game, the Raiders were shrouded in scandal and controversy. The team founders were prescient, in more ways than one. Add 43 years and the letter “i,” and in 2003 the Oakland Seniors can be seen huffing and puffing and near the bottom of the AFC West.

Both book and DVD emphasize the crucial role television played in the AFL’s survival. On “Inside The Vault,” former AFL broadcaster Curt Gowdy says that the NFL “made a major mistake when they were blacking out the home games [in NFL franchise cities] and leaving Sunday afternoon open sometimes and ABC would run this 4 o’clock game in from the AFL, and that was the only game you could see.

“It had an open market. It was like letting a vacuum salesman in the door on a Sunday. And once you let those fellows in, [you could see] they’re pretty good.”

Television helped force the merger. In 1964, the NFL signed a contract with CBS that would bring each NFL team a then-staggering $900,000. The AFL, earning $125,000 a team from ABC, couldn’t compete for players or fans under those terms. But when the AFL jumped to NBC for about $900,000 a team, the move gave the league new credibility -- and near-equal financial footing with the NFL.

The merger provided the springboard that launched the NFL to its present-day prosperity. But, typically, the owners had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the alignment that made them billions. Paul Brown helped scuttle a merger plan that called for 16 NFL teams in one conference and 10 AFL teams in the other by arguing that when he bought the Bengals, he bought “an NFL team.”

Another plan, calling for AFL and NFL teams to be mixed according to geography, was nixed by tradition-bound NFL owners. Former AFL player Lionel Taylor told Miller, “We could never have two original AFL teams play in the Super Bowl. I would love to see, like, the Raiders and Denver in the Super Bowl ... The NFL really rooked us.”

Instead, the Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Colts and Pittsburgh Steelers were paid to move to the AFC, forming a basic structure that has stood, with minor revisions, ever since. In “Going Long,” old Raider Ben Davidson says he has one lament.

“I wish it was still the AFL instead of the AFC,” he says. “Make that C back into an L.”